In the manufacture of sheet components, for example cards, tags, labels, coupons and the like, in accordance with one known method such sheet components are commonly affixed to separably connected panels of a sheet substrate, for example marginally punched elongate computer print out paper, the various sheets of which are connected by transversely extending scored lines. The sheet components are affixed to the panels by pressure sensitive adhesive which has either been permanently coated onto the various panels or has been applied thereto by initially having been coated onto the back surfaces of the sheet components and then permanently adhered to the sheet substrate panels when the sheet components are affixed thereto. As a result, sheet components which are affixed to the panels of continuous sheet substrates by this method either have no adhesive on their back surfaces when they are detached from the sheet substrate, or they are permanently affixed to the sheet substrate.
In another known method of manufacturing such sheet components the back surface of the sheet component is coated with pressure sensitive adhesive and the pressure sensitive adhesive is then covered with a protective liner having a layer of release coating material on the upper surface thereof which abuts the pressure sensitive adhesive coating. The undersurface of the protective liner, in turn, is adhesively bonded to the sheet substrate so that when the sheet component is removed from the panel, the back surface of the sheet component remains coated with the pressure sensitive adhesive. Although this method provides sheet components having pressure sensitive adhesive on their back surfaces, the method employed is uneconomical in that it requires the use of an intermediate release-coated protective liner having an extra layer of adhesive on its undersurface in order to make the desired sheet components. Also, the adhesive-coated back surfaces of the sheet components are unprotected by protective liners when they are removed from the sheet substrate since the protective liners permanently adhere to the sheet substrate.
It is, therefore, a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved method for making a sheet component having a pressure sensitive adhesive coating on its back surface.
An additional object of this invention is to provide an improved method for making a sheet component having a pressure sensitive adhesive coating on its back surface which coating is covered by a release-coated protective liner.
Another object of this invention is to provide an improved method for providing a removable, pressure sensitive adhesive-backed sheet component on a continuous moving sheet substrate during a single pass of the sheet substrate through sheet material processing equipment.
A further object of this invention is to provide an improved method for making pressure sensitive adhesive-backed sheet components, in which method pressure sensitive adhesive material is transferred from release coated areas on a sheet substrate to the back surfaces of the sheet components.
Yet another object of this invention is to provide an improved laminated sheet component having a pressure sensitive adhesive layer on its back surface and a release-coated protective liner covering such adhesive layer, the protective liner comprising a minor area of a sheet substrate that is separable from the sheet substrate along score lines formed therein.
Additional objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent as the following description proceeds: